You're not the only one, Paul. There have been several threads locked over at the UMGF they got so beyond civil. I'm just not that opinionated either way, surely not enough to criticize someone's NGD thread. (which is what happened a couple times) Like Mom said, if you can't say something nice, keep scrolling... or something like that.
As far as Martin goes, you won't find a much bigger fan of them than me. I don't care for these new 'printed top' Street Legend guitars at all, would not buy one, not even second-hand. But looking at the Aged Authentic Series from a couple different angles;
1.) Not building them is simply leaving money on the table by refusing to compete with Pre*War Guitars, (for example) who are basically carbon copying Martin and Gibson patterns and building methods from the so-called Golden Era of Guitar-making.
2.) Most players of medium-to-moderate means will never have a chance in a lifetime to otherwise afford a pre-1941 Martin Dreadnought. Those guitars are not affordable for the average player anymore. These things are as close as possible to the genuine article. They are expensive, but not unobtainable. If some degree of artificial aging (relic-ing, if you like) gets you there, it's available. If you'd rather have your vintage reproduction guitar mint-new, they do that too.
Gibson is making reissues of J-35 and J-45 (and others) in pre WW2 specs too, with this 'thin nitrocellulose VOS' finish option now. Let me decode that; it wears through to a distressed look, real fast. Sounds good out of the box too, without a lot of heavy finish cured over the spruce. They've done distressed varnish finish on F-5 Master Model mandolins for years.
We can shoot ducks in-season, but the quacking goes on... I think it's just a fact of business in the world now for these guitar-makers.
The curious part of me wants to know how they do it so accurately.
